A caregiver typically takes various notes pertaining to the care of patients. For example, the caregiver may record a principal complaint identified by a patient regarding his or her condition, known as a “chief complaint.” For efficiency, the caregiver may record the chief complaint in abbreviated form, such as by writing “s/o/b” or “sob” for the chief complaint of “shortness of breath.” A caregiver may enter this information using any technique or combination of techniques, such as by using a keypad entry mechanism, a handwriting capture mechanism, a voice recognition input mechanism, etc. A hospital or clinic can use the chief complaint conveyed by a patient in various ways. For example, the hospital can use this information to provide timely care to the patient, especially in an emergency situation.
However, the chief complaint that is entered in the above-described manner is prone to ambiguity and error. For instance, the caregiver who enters the chief complaint may enter erroneous information, such as by misspelling a word. For example, the caregiver may input the chief complaint “chest pain shortness of breath,” instead of the correctly-spelled text “chest pain shortness of breath.” In addition or alternatively, the caregiver may use inconsistent abbreviations to shorten chief complaints. For example, the caregiver may express the above-identified chief complaint (“chest pain shortness of breath”) by entering any of “cp sob,” “c/p sob,” “sob/cp,” “sob cp,” “chesp pain sob,” “sob/chest pain/,” “cp difficulty breathing,” and so on. More generally, ambiguity in chief complaints may stem from multiple factors, including any combination of: the use of multiple inconsistent ways of writing abbreviations; spelling errors; re-ordering of terms in idiosyncratic ways; the use of multiple inconsistent conventions for expressing punctuation; the inclusion of multiple complaints in a single entry; and the general ambiguity that is inherent in any natural language (e.g., as exhibited by the use of “difficulty breathing” and “shortness of breath” to represent the same complaint). These ambiguities may be exacerbated in those environments in which caregivers provide their notes in voice form and/or in handwriting form; in this situation, an automated or manual transcription service may have difficulty parsing and understanding the complaint the caregiver has vocalized or written.
Various negative consequences may ensue from ambiguity in chief complaints. For example, the ambiguity may result in inefficiencies in categorizing the chief complaints. In extreme cases, the ambiguity may result in the failure to provide appropriate care to patients in a timely manner.
The above-described issues are not limited to the medical (e.g., health-related) environment, but rather extend to any environment that involves the capture of potentially ambiguous linguistic information pertaining to a particular domain of subject matter.